Scan Man is being facetious (I hope). The reason for Microsoft making this decision is two-fold. First, they put egg all over the EU's face, and second, they (potentially) avoid having to bundle competitors' browsers with their operating system. Do not confuse this as being something the EU decided should be done.

I'm unsure whether or not they expected the EU to take that lying down, but I can't imagine they'll go for it.

The head of the EU division that hands out these is a (vicious) Dutch political lady, her name is Neelie Smit-Kroes. Now I know that her term in (that) office is almost served up, so maybe it could be that MS wants to put egg-face thingy over the EU and hopes that they stretch this long enough to get a more milder head of office.

Admittedly putting egg now seems not such a smart move when the EU position is "refilled", but hey...what does MS know that we don't?

Man, they can't include a GUI anymore either because Stardock and various other gui makers would complain about a monopoly. Then they couldn't include a command line because linux would cry afoul that their OS has yet to take off due to the popularity of DOS.